Stranger in a Strange Kiln...

I got up this morning and did my usual ritual upon waking after a night of beadmaking... ran over to the kiln to see what the temperature was. It was down to a cool 103 degrees! Safe enough to open the door without stressing out my little beadies. I gently pulled them out one by one... "Not bad. Not bad." I found just what I had expected to find. Not ready to clean them up yet, I was about to put the mandrels in a jar when I heard a strange noise. There was a "click-click" sound coming from inside my kiln. I was pretty sure all of the mandrels came out...and none were poking out of the kiln door. "Hmmm...the kiln is off, so why would it click?"

I didn't hear it again, so I turned around to leave the kitchen. "Click-click". It was a grinding kind of click like my kiln makes when it is controlling it's temperature. "How can this be? The kiln is off! I must be going nuts!" Being the paranoid person that I am...I stayed and looked around suspiciously...quietly hoping it was just in my head. Nope! There it was again! I bent over to take a look inside the kiln. That's when I saw it!



This little creature was mimicking the sound of my kiln! How in the world did it get in there? I don't remember making this little guy.

I carefully stuck out my hand and picked him up. It seemed like a harmless little guy. He looks like a duck, so I said, "Hey there, little duck!" To my surprise he let out a roar like a bear! How odd! Maybe he thinks he is a bear.

This confused duck quickly jumped out of my hand and headed for the bag of pretzels on the counter. "Hey, you little mooch, save some of those pretzels for my kids!" He ignored me and kept snacking.

I don't know what's going on...but I think he is getting comfortable in my house. The worst he has done so far is eat our food, but we can handle that. I think I'll take some time to study this strange duck that thinks it's a bear, and see what I can figure out. From what I can tell so far, he likes to mimic sounds. I don't know if it has a name, so I'll just call him "Loboto-Bear".